We get home from a sweaty playdate at the park and have a little playtime before nap. I sit on the couch while MB flits around me, putting chalk and her toy keys in and out of her tiny purse. My eyelids are heavy, and soon my head is heavy, so I lean over onto a pillow.

MB pops up from the floor. Night Night! she says. And disappears into the den.

Half a minute later she comes back with a blanket and heaves it on top of my legs. Night Night! she says again.

Oh, Mary Bullock! You are so sweet. That was so nice of you to get Mommy a blanket! I say. Can I have a kiss?

I haven’t done a Friday Favorites in a while, mostly because I rarely have time to even search out things I might like, much less save all the pictures and post them. The upside to this is that my online shopping has taken a hit, which I’m sure makes a certain husband very happy.

But every now and then in my brief online perusals, I come across a post about motherhood that really nails it, and I’m going to share a couple of those with you today. I hope you like them as much as I did.

The thing is–I don’t talk so much on here about Things I Hate, since that was what I pledged to do less of when I started blogging. But motherhood is not all kisses and giggles, friends. There are sacrifices made, like getting to sit by the pool with a magazine, or reading a magazine at all, anywhere. Or the freedom to go wherever and do whatever, whenever you want. This is what I fantasize about when I’ve had it up to -HERE- with the day and it’s only 8am [like this morning]. And it needs to be said that those days DO exist, lest you think that I’m just a big fat mommy-liar walking around here on happy pills or something.

I know, I’m late today. Thanks for pointing that out, sweet, patient sister-o-mine.

If it tells you anything about how our day has been, Mary Bullock is back in her crib. This almost never happens in the late afternoon, and when it does, you can bet what came before it wasn’t pretty. So thanks for waiting patiently [or not so patiently].

Anyway, I thought I would rectify my tardiness today by being SUPER EARLY on tomorrow’s post. How’s that?

Favorite new iphone app:

It’s an iphone to iphone text messenger. It costs $.99, but otherwise your texts [to other iphone users] are free. This is especially important since in my 2nd month of iphone use, I way exceeded my limit. Who knew I texted so much? I didn’t. Thanks for the tip, Leigh!

Favorite blog post of the week: here. And by favorite I mean, in a bittersweet, had tears running down my face, break-my-heart kind of way. Have you been reading Design Mom’s pregnancy series? I have loved them even more than I thought I would. It’s amazing to me what women go through to become mothers. It’s not for the faint of heart, that’s for sure.

Favorite song of the week:

[Excuse those cheese-bo pictures in the background, please.]Did I tell you I re-joined the gym? Best decision ever. Don’t know why I didn’t do it long ago. Perhaps I would be carrying around less baggage, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I’ve found that I run better while listening to the Natasha Bedingfield Pandora station. I discovered this song this week on the treadmill, and I’ve been meaning to email it to Lee but forgot. So here you go, Bubba. [You and Everyone Else.]

Favorite Etsy Find:

Actually I found this a while ago, then it sold out, and now it’s back! If we didn’t need to tear apart our house this year, I would totally buy it. But since we do have to do that, and then we actually pay for the tearing apart and subsequent re-doing, you are free to purchase this for yourself. Just don’t tell me. [Or wear it around me.] [Unless you are evil.][so, if I see you wearing this, I will just assume you are evil, and I won’t need to actually say we are no longer friends, ok?] But isn’t it pretty?

Favorite MB of the week: [Since I know that’s what you really came to see anyway.]

Double fisting.

Nice.

Is it Friday yet?

[Update: Head on over to The Other Mama to see what some other mamas’ favorites are this week!]

The thing is, I am a complainer by nature. You may or may not have deduced this by now. This blog is actually not an extension of 90% of what goes through my head. It’s an attempt to celebrate the other 10%: when things go well, OR when things don’t go as planned but are still hilarious or heartwarming or memorable. In doing so, I hope to make the percentage of awesomeness I see in the world increase.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it’s hard, because we live in an imperfect world. Bad things happen to good people, we make mistakes, lose our tempers, forget to make dinner, blah blah blah. And such has been this week for me.

And so now I bring to you my Friday Favorites, a list which is infinitely more interesting than the list of things I’ve hated this week.

2. Mary Bullock’s new trick:Me: Mary Bullock, what does a monkey say?MB: ah ah ah ah ah ah ah!It is not at all surprising to me that the first animal sound that Mary Bullock learned is the monkey. ENTIRELY APROPOS.

3. The Zac Brown Band Pandora station. Also, the random iValentine station which has shown up on my iphone this week. [But the iValentine station is admittedly not as good when you think you’re listening to the Zac Brown station and all the sudden Peter Gabriel comes on.]

She calls this her go-to meal, while I call this a production. Chop garlic? Whoozie whatsie? But it was totally worth it, as Lee called it my “best dinner ever.” [And for someone whose “go-to” is shake-n-bake, I suppose it probably is!] Which is good because we’re having it again tonight.

That’s it for this week. I’ll hopefully be back with a Valentine’s post soon. I finally finished Mary Bullock’s Valentine earlier this week, now we just have to finish her Valentines for her baby friends. If I can finish them with fewer than 3 trips to the store, I’ll consider it a success!

There’s nothing like a little end of the week reflection to remind me that the Things I Hate list is very, very tiny and the Birthday Things list is so vast. There are lots of Birthday Things I don’t actually write about, you know, because who really cares about pot roast? or Mary Bullock’s new big girl jammies?

For that matter, who really cares what I think about mini-Boden or Julie & Julia? But you know what I mean.

Anyway. I can boil down this week’s FAVORITES into three bits of news:

Kirby is going to be home from Iraq by October 20th, and he and Molly are coming to MB’s birthday party. [It’s still weird to think that on another September 11 not long ago, Lee and I had only been dating for one month, and Kirby hadn’t even graduated from high school.]

Jen, Jake, and Baby Bennie who is already bigger than Mary Bullock and whom I have only seen like twice in his ENTIRE LIFE, are coming to Mary Bullock’s birthday party.

My Mom(thecraftygenius) and Daddy are coming to Mary Bullock’s birthday party. Last year this time, Daddy was in rehab (the physical kind, not the drug kind), couldn’t walk, and was in a heartbreaking amount of pain. And that wasn’t even the end of the ordeal–he was back in the hospital two more times after that. And now he’s so much better and still working hard at his physical therapy, and I’m really grateful that they’ve decided to make the trip and celebrate with us.

I think my poor little heart might burst with happiness. Ya’ll just excuse me if I cry through the whole thing.